Fanbinding: Like a Wildfire Burning by @werewolves-are-real

It's illogical to deprive the body of necessary nutrition, but old habits can be hard to break.

Before I left for the holidays back in Dec, I made a whole bunch of books, and four of them were for and in-person meet-up for a class with other Renegaders!

I bound "Like a Wildfire Burning" (on Ao3) for @pleasantboatpress since they love Star Trek & Spock. It's a Spock-centric fic, focused on his struggle with an eating disorder and being caught between two cultures.

For design, I researched to translate "Wildfire burning" into Vulcan and then how to write it in Vulcan calligraphy (back). The fabric is Colibri copper, and the endpapers are a chiyogami I picked up down in Kyoto. I found a great smoke vector that I was able to play with for the title and first pages. I went for a gold splatter on the edges.

Honestly though the best part of making this book has been being able to meet and hang out with manda in person!!

so I have been thinking about why I hated the Spock Is Turned Human episode of SNW so much and I think I've nailed it down

cause like. Vulcans are a specific flavour of autistic, right?

Throughout 60 years of Star Trek, and particularly through Strange New Worlds, we've had it impressed on us that Vulcans absolutely do not feel less than humans. On the contrary, the reason that Vulcans prize logic, ritual and objectivity is that their emotions are deeply intense and overwhelming. In fact, like one episode prior and in the fuckin. Previously On... for this episode, Spock's saying "Vulcan emotion is too intense to handle and what might happen if I don't suppress it scares me."

It's made repeatedly, explicitly, clear that Vulcan emotional detachment is a choice and a cultural practise. It's made directly clear as well that Vulcans don't experience the world as less intense or emotional than humans; they work from birth to suppress it, it's a learned practice.

And they've leant into this really hard elsewhere in SNW! They've talked about Vulcans choosing to reject logic and act on emotion, Spock's seasons-long arc is about his fear of his own emotions - he's even specifically brought up that he hasn't undergone Kolinahr and therefore is suppressing his emotional state only through conscious practice.

but this episode. is a story about someone who's physiologically less able to feel being "humanised" - experiencing touch, taste, laughter and feeling more strongly than they have before.

That's a Data story. Not a Spock one.

Like I get what they're trying to do - push Spock into dealing directly with his human side, empathise with Amanda's strength, etc - but the way they do it conflicts really directly with everything we know about Vulcans, and also kind of confirms Vulcan bias against Spock's humanity by establishing that yes actually regardless of upbringing humans just Are Wired Wrong for Vulcan society. which is weird actually because both Amanda and Michael, humans raised outside Vulcan, can handle Vulcan societal expectations, but Spock, raised fully in the culture, struggles to and has to have everything explained to him.

And also the way they do it I found really uncomfortable and, you know, dehumanising. We're shown a version of Spock who isn't managing his emotions through discipline and will, but who just Doesn't Have Them That Much and, when given the Normal amount of feelings, goes hog wild and is functionally a child with no self-control.

There's a scene where they explicitly say he's functionally a teenager! As if he's not already been through a human adolescence!

Everyone of every species, not just human, is suddenly lecturing him on the nature of Feeling Things, which he receives as new information! despite the fact we know that managing his emotions has been a constant struggle for Spock! and we know that Spock (like other Vulcans) likes food and music and has a sense of humour and experiences friendship and anger and frustration and love.

and I think it speaks to a deeply neuronormative kind of infantalisation - he isn't reacting to emotion the way Normal (here: human) people do so it must be because he doesn't feel it at all. he isn't vegetarian he just hasn't experienced how Bacon bacon is. he isn't suppressing his distress it just isn't there. he doesn't have a different cultural relationship to humour he just Can't Laugh.

like the 'inhuman entity experiences human emotion' plotline is a Star Trek classic and it's usually a fun time - it's fun with Q and with Data and with Odo et al. but it doesn't work with Spock because we know that Vulcans aren't less physiologically capable of emotion than humans, they're less culturally willing to engage with emotion. And that's specifically because they're more sensitive to strong feeling than humans.

like yeah this is nerd griping, but it's also just very galling from an autistic perspective (the same way that having Spock go bacon-mad this episode seems to have been pretty galling from a Jewish perspective). Something that's always been very resonant about Vulcans and Spock specifically with a lot of autistic people is that experience of feeling things so deeply and strongly that you have to develop a sometimes overly-strict discipline of emotional management and cut yourself off from them entirely, and it is often mistaken by those around you as being unfeeling or numb. And the way Spock is portrayed consistently acknowledges that that's not what it is, that it's an (often maladaptive but necessary) practice that's active work in order to fit into a society that doesn't have space for the scale of your emotions or where your emotions might be a risk. And that you can learn to retain the parts that help you but still make close emotional connections through that barrier.

Idk this episode doesn't understand Vulcans which is really frustrating particularly for an episode entirely about Vulcans. It doesn't make sense that being turned human would fully undermine Spock's ability to behave as Vulcan the way it does unless your position is that Vulcans are inherently more numb to feeling than humans, which is explicitly not the case - and the message of the end of the episode partially rests on the idea that it's bigoted to assume his humanity makes him less Vulcan, especially since Amanda is able to perform Vulcanness well, except the entire precept of the episode and its shenanigans are that his humanity does intrinsically prevent him performing his cultural heritage properly and make him irrational and reactive. Like, the episode's failure to understand Why Vulcans Work doesn't just conflict with the rest of the show, it also leaves this episode a chaotic mess cause A doesn't in any way feed into B.

also unrelatedly T'Pring Did Nothing Wrong and she's so right, Spock is a wee bitch.

"Vulcans do not worry," Tuvok says, while actively worrying about his bff Kathryn Janeway not getting enough sleep.

amok time posits the idea "what if a boring nerd got so horny it nearly killed him"

mirror universe q and picard phone doodles (they are bad and sketchy as but its ok)

Star Wars has Force dyads and Star Trek has t'hy'la

Both concepts make me wanna take someone by the shoulders and shake them into oblivion if only to make them understand how I feel about soulmates

Had a revelation

Look up, turn around, everything is falling down.  Do you promise to be mine forever?  Hold me tight, don’t let me go until the end of time—

I’d destroy everything just to be with you

Gates McFadden

Stories Across The Universe: The Women Of Star Trek

I find it really hilarious how old tv and movies (and not even that old tbh) will have the QUEEREST fucking storylines and then in a panic slap some bioessentialist comphet dialogue on top like that’s going to cover up the gay

I guess the no-homo intern has a much longer, prouder history than I realized

A Star Trek Novel called “Pocket Full of Lies” really has NO business going so hard.

Fanbinding: Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit by @lazulisong, Linguistic Ambiguities in Vulcan Ethical Codes and Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations by @elumish

I am super happy to show off this kinda-anthology bind! When I decided to bind these fics, I reread the stories. There's a lot of academia happening in the background! And Kirk is very reluctantly blackmailed into writing scholarly papers by his mentor. So, what better formatting for these works than to go all out... and format them as a Ph.D thesis?

In these efforts I went so far as to download thesis submission and formatting guidelines from multiple institutions ahahaha. So! We have the correct ToC, impact statement (from me), Preface, appendices, etc. (However I did not cave to using TNR. Instead I used Baskerville for my font. I also indulged in some pretty marbled endpapers).

For the case, I used what I think? is skivertex (hey I bought it here in Japan, there's a translation issue) and I used my heat foil pen to do the logo and titling on the cover. I am happy with how it turned out overall (even if i had to remake the case once...) !! And VERY happy to have it on my shelf!

#happybirthday #billirwin #actor #sukal #startrekdiscovery #thegrinch #sisteract2 #interstellar #rachelgettingmarried #csi #legion #lawandorder #TheDropout #TheAndyWarholDiaries #TheGildedAge #ladyinthewater #hotshots #rickiandtheflash #acrosstheuniverse #mrnoodle #startrek57

Star Trek Interactions and Fanfics

The results are in, as per this post. Data on interactions in shows is from TrekViz based on episode transcripts from Chakoteya, and fanfic data is based on works on AO3 tagged 'Character/Character' and/or 'Character & Character'.

For character pairs to analyze, I went through the top twenty relationship tags on AO3 for each series (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT), discounting those that had more than two characters or included characters not in the TrekViz data, and combining '/' and '&'. That left: 8 characters in 9 pairs for TOS, 10 characters in 13 pairs for TNG, 16 characters in 14 pairs for DS9, 7 characters in 10 pairs for VOY, and 7 characters in 12 pairs for ENT.

A comparison of number of interactions and number of works is presented as a table, as well as a graph with linear regression.

Correlation coefficients are 0.9106 for TOS, 0.0243 for TNG, -0.0130 for DS9, 0.6793 for VOY, and 0.2310 for ENT. Swapping straight counts out for percentages (number of interactions/works for a given pair divided by the total number for the respective series) gives an overall correlation of 0.4814. (Correlation coefficients range form -1 to 1, with the closer to 0, the less of a correlation; 1 is a perfect positive correlation and -1 is a perfect negative correlation)

Overall, about 48% of the variation in number of works for a given pair can be explained by variation in the number of interactions. TOS has the greatest correlation - both the show and fanfic are about as equally focused on the triumvirate. Next highest is for VOY, with the two biggest outliers are Chakotay and Janeway being about as overrepresented as Janeway and Tuvok are underrepresented. Then there's ENT, with just about the only thing note of being that technically Hoshi/Reed is just barely overrepresented. TNG just barely has a positive correlation. DS9 has even less of a correlation, but stands out in being the only negative correlation of the lot. To the surprise of I'm sure no one, this is pretty much single-handedly due to Bashir/Garak. Individual graphs with labelled data points for each show (with percentages) are below the cut.

Thinking a lil about my trek verse and how like. Officially there are probably only three people on board who Know about Char: Jim because he's Captain and needs to know the important stuff about his crew, Scotty because she's engineering and 90% of her function is to go do the dangerous shit other people can't reasonably do, and Bones because it would be handy to know the corpse in his med-bad might wake up in an hour or two.

Unofficially, Spock probably knows either because the other three are so bad at keeping secrets or as a result of one of the many times he's had to kick Jim out of the Captain's seat for one reason or another, and Nurse Chapel because as much as I love Bones, we all know that nurses are really the ones in charge in any medical setting. Everyone in engineering knows, not least because every single one of them has seen her do something so unbelievably unhinged at least once. There's like a whole Talk every time they get a new crew member. Also most if not all of med-bay because again, regularly turning up either with improbable injuries or for checkups after doing something unhinged. Maybe not the whole picture, but enough of it to know that Char can withstand way more than any human should logically be able to.

Which then means that realistically the whole crew knows. Maybe not the details, but just that there's something weird about Morris.

But because she doesn't really talk about it, no one else does either. It's all sort of you know that I know that you know and there's all sorts of theories floating around, from the sensible to the absurd, and she plays into most of them now and then just for the fun of it.

What I'm saying is that Char is the Enterprise's resident cryptid.

Explanation of my fanfics

I also have a lot of fanfic stories. Some of these I have started posting on AO3 (I just go by GoatinaCoat over there) and all of them are basically me sticking ocs into these universes and making shenanigans happen.

These are just all my long running fics I have planned. I do some shorter stuff which I won’t be counting on this list.

Grimm: New Blood: This is a Grimm sequel fic which follows the kids of the main cast as well as some ocs. It mainly follows Kelly and Hazel (one of the triplets) as detectives who like Nick and Hank before them have to solve wesen related cases. Old enemies are stirring though, looking for vengeance.

Was it all worth it?: A Star Wars oc fic. It follows Ceran Ormara from his life as a padawan through the Clone Wars and during the time of the Empire.

The Stars are Home: A Star Trek fic which starts by following Seren and Akoli, a half vulcan and klingon, during the 27th Century. The pair become unlikely friends and it follows their lives, through the joy and pain.

Hopes and Dreams au: My take on the characters of DC. It’s a combination of a lot of different canons, and some of my own ideas.

Bats of Gotham: The Batman story of the Hopes and Dreams au. Part 1 follows Bruce as he adopts Dick Grayson and while figuring out how to be a father, he has to figure out the identity of the villain known as Scarecrow.

Legendary Ties: A pokemon au story where it’s revealed certain people are connected to legendary pokemon which is why they are able to save the world. Cody is a pokemon ranger who at one time helped defeat Team Plasma, but his life takes a turn when Team Fable comes after him and the others connected to the Legendary pokemon.

Unamed Digimon story: Milly only trusts 2 people: her dad and her partner digimon, Dorumon. When the fact she’s a tamer gets revealed, she begrudgingly ends up working with Ray and Alex and their partner digimon Fanbeemon and Liollmon.

Unamed Spidersona story: Sawyer is the vigilante known as Orange Spider. They actually study arachnids, specialising in scorpions (yes they are annoyed they got spider powers) and while not working in a lab they patrol the streets of New York. They are trying to figure out the cause of the fire that killed their grandfather, while making sure no one has to suffer like they did.